Comments on: How Much Grammar and Syntax Terminology Do I Need to Know?

By: admin

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 12:03:14 +0000

“the difference between learning a language and learning about language.”

That was perfect, Chris, I’m going to use that from now on when I’m explaining this to people, thank you.

Thanks for stopping by, by the way. Cheers,

Andrew

By: chris(thai_student)

chris(thai_student) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:28:21 +0000

The Latin based terms and Latin emphasis make it even worse when studying languages that are very different from Latin, leading to misconception that they don’t have much grammar, or pointless facts that this word can serve as a noun an adjective or a verb depending on blah blah blah (a forced admission that you don’t have an appropriate way to describe it using a Latin based grammar model).

I am not a great fan of grammar this way either. Some people get hot under the collar when you tell that grammar is not important but you have to look at the context, have to look at the difference between implicit and explicit knowledge, the difference between learning a language and learning about language.

http://chris-thai-student.blogspot.com/2010/06/grammar-go-home.html

By: admin

admin — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 03:33:42 +0000

I agree that part of the problem is the Latin-based terms, and you’re also right in that current textbooks/workbooks/phrasebooks you might use for language learning will require you to use some terms, which is why I said you just let what and how much formal grammar you need to learn be dictated by necessity: if you have to look up a grammatical term to be able to understand a workbook exercise you’re doing, then fine, look it up and learn it, but don’t go and bother learning a bunch of grammar ahead of time in anticipation of its usefulness, because you’ll likely find, as I and many other language learners I know have, that most of it isn’t very useful.

Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to leave a comment, and a very well written one at that.

Cheers,
Andrew

By: Cainntear

Cainntear — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:54:12 +0000

“I’ll put it this way: the best way to determine what you need to learn is to simply dive into the language and then look up anything you find that you have to know as you go along.”

Or in other words, grammatical terminology isn’t important in and of itself — but if the materials you’re learning from rely on it, you need to learn it.

I agree with that, but that’s not the same as saying:
“You can learn all the grammar you’ll ever need for anything other than passing a test on grammar via context”

Which may be true, but is it efficient? I don’t believe so.

The thing with grammatical terminology is that it was designed to make language easier, by explaining the grammatical point… in Latin. Unfortunately most textbook writers choose to remain oblivious to the fact that this is no longer helpful to the average learner.

Use of Latin terminology makes grammar seem arcane and obscure to the learner, and the result is that people think that conscious grammar study is arcane and obscure.

A well-ordered introduction to grammar that uses plain-English descriptions that describe the grammar to an English-speaker in the same way that the Latin labels helped Latin speakers would be very effective.

I’ve trained myself to understand grammatical terminology because current materials require me to know this — I dream of a future where you don’t have to learn a whole specialist jargon simply to learn the basics of a language. When that happens, multilinguism will be universal, because it will just be soooooo easy.